


Leached Magic

by InfinityIllusion



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Magic!Stiles, Mentioned Character Death, Time Travel, everyone dies, no one dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:35:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2563406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinityIllusion/pseuds/InfinityIllusion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course the peace can't last.  Someone else has decided to claim Beacon Hills for themselves and clear out the supernatural inhabitants at the same time by draining the very essence of their beings.  Someone has started to leach the magic from the very air of Beacon Hills and Stiles is the only one left to fix it (again).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dear readers,
> 
> This is my first Teen Wolf fic, which a (very) few people may recognize from being up on FFN. I would just like to clarify: I have watched the first two and a half episodes of Teen Wolf and read a lot of fanfiction. Most of my knowledge comes from the fics I've read and what I've been able to piece together of cannon. Needless to say, there will be things that are wrong. Feel free to correct me, but bear in mind I might have a reason for something not being correct (but I'd still love to know, since I might write another TW fic someday).
> 
> Therefore, in this 'verse, Erika, Boyd, and Allison are still alive. At this point, Cora and Malia do not play a major role in this fic (this is subject to change). Derek and Scott are both Alphas.
> 
> If you have questions, please ask and thank you for reading (and pardon the formatting problems)!
> 
> This fic was inspired by the song John Wayne Gacy, Jr. by Sufjan Stevens.

Life had been going well.  Beacon Hills, while a popular place for supernatural activity, had begun attracting creatures that weren’t psychotic, revenge seeking, or in pursuit of world domination. There were also fewer species that had sociopathic tendencies.

Of course, it didn’t last.

Something was killing the supernatural – by removing the supernatural.

Shape shifters could no longer turn, losing everything that they had gained in the transformation; witches couldn’t perform rituals or even the most basic of spells.  The random satyr chasing a nymph through the forest no longer had his nature magic, his music, or his life.

The corpse was left as a human man with an oddly shaped skull and a parody of human legs – the limbs were stripped of flesh, the bones twisted as if a person had broken and healed the bones multiple times at various angles to adjust the satyr’s stature.  In a small clearing, about 20 feet away from the former satyr, an oddly shaped laurel tree reached it’s branches forward and to the sky, as if running from something more terrifying than a lustful satyr.

The wolves of the McCall and Hale packs had been on edge for weeks before these events began occurring more seriously.  Especially since the initial losses of magic were small, concerning, certainly, but not Oh-my-God-we’re-all-going-to-die-help! bad…

“Hey Ms. W, I’m back for some more mountain ash!”  Stiles yelled as he entered the small shop.

“What have you been doing to run out so soon?  You were just here last week!”  The crone screeched at him.  Honestly, sometimes her voice was worse than some of Lydia’s Banshee Shrikes.  Stiles winced internally and rethought that statement.  Some of those Shrikes were much worse, but for different reasons, of course, so the two really couldn’t be compared at the same level—.

“Just trying to keep some curious ‘wolves from nosing around my stuff again,” he replied cheerfully.

The witch snorted at him and shoved the bag into his hand. “I’m sure.  Now, get out of here.  I don’t want to see your Spark near this store for another fortnight!”

Stiles saluted and replied, “No problem, ma’am!  Not unless…something…”

He started down at the bag.  “Um, Ms. W?  …There’s no magic in this ash.”

“WHAT! Of course there is! Let me—” She grabbed the bag and reached the same conclusion as Stiles.  “By the Goddess, what happened?  This is from the strongest grove this side of the Mississippi and this has _never_ happened before…”

Stiles, too, stared at the bag, face suddenly straight, serious and his eyes focused and narrowed. “Have you ever heard of something like this occurring before?”

The witch shakes her head, wrinkles on her forehead becoming more pronounced. “No, never.  I’ll ask around and see if I can find anything from the rest of my coven.”

“Thanks Ms. W.  I’ll talk to the packs and let them know.”

“You do that Spark.”  And with that, Stiles left her shop, pulling out his cellphone to call Scott.

“Hey man, call the packs together.  Something’s going down.  Ms. W’s mountain ash didn’t have any magic and she doesn't know why and neither do I.  I’ll grab Lydia before heading over, ok?”

“Yeah, I’ll call everyone.”

“Thanks, bye.”

“Bye.” Stiles ended the call before climbing into his Jeep and heading towards the library.

~IiI~

            Lydia was there, of course, pouring over a compendium of miscellaneous math theories. However, her head snapped up while her hands snapped the book closed as soon as she caught Stiles approaching from the corner of her eye.

            As soon as she saw his face, she pushed the tomb to the side and began shoving her notes into her bag.

            “Now or later?” She asked.

            “Later. Let’s get to the meeting.”

            She nods and follows him out.

~IiI~

            It’s been months since the first meeting (but before the unfortunate satyr and nymph) and neither Lydia nor Stiles nor Deaton nor any of their respective contacts have any idea as to what is the problem.

            Stiles, at his wit’s end, decided to call Derek and vent.

            “…And Goddamnit, I don’t even know where to look anymore!”  He finished after a solid half hour of nonstop talking.

            “…Stiles, I don’t have any more ideas than you do…” Derek paused to clear his throat.

            “Well, yeah, I know that, but seriously, can you think of any other place I could look?”

            “Not off the top of my head. You know Peter would be better for this.”

            “Yeah, but I don’t know his number,” ok, he actually does, “and I don’t want him knowing mine.”

            “…I’ll ask him for you, but he might not get back to me for awhile.”  Again, Derek clears his throat.

            “I know, dude. But at least I might get something. …By the way, why’d you keep clearing your throat?”

            “…”

“Dude, just tell me before I annoy it out of you in three hours of your life that you’ll never get back.”

“…Fine. I feel like something got stuck in the back of my throat.”

“Okaaaay. Well, is it like a film or something spread over the back of it?  You can’t be getting some kind of werewolf sinus infection, can you?”

“Werewolves don’t get sick.  …But yes, that’s what it feels like.”

Stiles’ eyes go wide.  No way.

“…Do you have a fever?”

“Stiles, you know wolves run hot.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.  Do you have a fever?”

“…I guess I’m feeling a little warm.”

“ _Shit._ ”

~IiI~

            Life became worse from there on out.  Derek eventually became bedridden as whatever was draining the magic of Beacon Hills’ resident supernatural population constantly sapped his immune system and energy levels (because, yeah, the whole “’wolves don’t get sick?”  Yeah, that’s because of supernatural immune systems). The rest of the wolves were suffering too.  Scott’s asthma was back in full force (and that had been one heart pounding trip to the hospital that Stiles had hoped he’d never have to be a part of again) and Erica’s seizures restarted. Isaac repeatedly injured himself attempting stunts impossible without his werewolf strength and speed. Boyd was mostly exempt, if only because he recognized the symptoms the other wolves had been demonstrating in himself and abstained from anything necessitating werewolf powers.

            Even Lydia was not exempt.  She, too, was experiencing the energy drain, but she was almost relishing the lack of visions and screams.  For the past year, she had been having flashes of various deaths, but was unable to name the persons being killed.  Whoever they were, they didn’t go quietly to the afterlife, their deaths long, painful, and unnecessarily drawn out.  Lydia had been in tears after every single vision…and Stiles was in permanent denial of the only people who would have made Lydia cry, even unknowingly, die.

            So Stiles hoped (again, that fragile thing that had never brought him anything but grief in these situations) that she wasn’t seeing the deaths of the pack.  But he couldn’t be sure and he knew it was haunting Lydia as well.

~IiI~

            Skirmishes broke out again amongst the supernatural.  The protective instincts of the various creatures were running high with the unknown threat (illness) and the kids of all the creatures were slowly taking to their beds.  Unfortunately, instead of banding together, everyone just started snapping at the others. This stress, in turn, was blamed on the wolf packs, since many creatures felt that they weren’t doing enough to keep them safe.

            “I’m never allowing any more kitsune back in the town,” Scott said as he wiped his face free of blood and tried to get his breath back without using his inhaler (it wasn’t working, so Stiles shoved it into his hand).

            “Except Kira,” Stiles and Allison felt the need to add while Scott used the inhaler.

            He nodded in agreement. “Except Kira."

            “But, it isn’t like they don’t have a point.  We haven’t been doing anything to solve this problem.  There’s nothing we _can_ do.”

“Excuse me?  Doing nothing? I’ve been spending the last five months buried obscure tombs alongside Lydia and Deaton trying to figure out what’s happening.  Hell, we’ve even ask Chris to check with some of his Hunter connections!  And anyways, you just hit the nail on the head – _we don’t know what’s going on so we can’t fix it_. This isn’t really a physical attack on any of us.  It isn’t even a psychological attack or really a magical attack as far as I can determine. We have nearly nothing to go on and thousands of books to comb and translate.  So, yeah, we’re not protecting the supernatural people like we have in the past, but too bad.  This isn’t like anything we’ve faced in the past, so they should feel empowered to entertain their own solutions!”

“Stiles has a point Scott,” Allison added.  “We’re trying to fight shadows and mist here. None of this is actually doing anything except exhausting all of you further.”

“…Well,” Scott hesitated.  Stiles glared.

“Scott, you know it’s true.”

The alpha hung his head, “I know, but I still feel like we should be doing more.”

Stiles grabbed Scott into a hug. “I know,” he said, “that’s why you’re the leader.”

~IiI~

Nothing changed, though.  Everyone grew weaker and slowly creatures started to die.  Most incidents were like the satyr – sudden and seemingly swift. The families who had initially stayed after Scott’s announcement that they _had no idea what was going on_ began to leave.  No one wants to risk his or her children.

And so Beacon Hills began to die again.

~IiI~

Stiles spent an increasing amount of time pouring over the volumes that people were sending Deaton, to the point that he was napping every few hours before returning to his reading.  Lydia and Deaton were on the same schedule while the wolves are taking care of their other pack mates.  Derek was getting worse (they all are, but, like Stiles has hypothesized, born wolves have like no immunity to most things.  He wished, silently, that he’d never had that theory confirmed) and Erica was retreating back into her shell.  Isaac was beginning to have problems with his lack of strength and Derek’s illness and Boyd was the only one apparently able to deal with everything at the wolf house. Allison was splitting time between cursory patrols with her father and caring for the research team who are all feeling the effects of the drain.

“Stiles,” Allison shook him awake.

He bolted upright, chest heaving.

She looked down at him, his rumpled clothes, and the deep shadows beneath his eyes.  It wasn’t like she was looking any better, though.

“Yup, I’m up.  Can I have coffee now?”

“Sure—”

The phone rings.

“I’ll get it,” Allison rushed downstairs to answer.

Stiles rubbed his face when his eyes caught on a random ritual in the current block of wood pulp he was slogging through.  It didn’t look like it would help them currently, but as a last resort… He marked the page.

A muffled thump echoed through the house and quiet sobs followed.

Stiles ran down the stairs to Allison, who he found in front of the phone, weeping.

“What happened?” He asked, but a part of him knew even as he wrapped his arms around the hunter.

“Erica’s dead and that’s caused Derek to get worse…” Allison whispers into his shoulder.

Stiles hugged her tighter.  Yeah, he knew.

~IiI~

There wasn’t really enough time to mourn Erica.  Everyone pushed themselves to find anything before anyone else (Derek, although Boyd might be a close second from grief) died.

It was not enough.

Nine months after the beginning of this magical drain, Derek was buried in his family plot.  Scott took Isaac and Boyd into his pack, but the bonds are almost nonexistent now and it was more as a show of support than anything else.

Stiles still hadn’t found anything, but he started looking at the ritual he saw as a last resort.  It was starting to look like a pretty good idea...

Lydia and Deaton didn’t know about that ritual.  Stiles wasn’t even supposed to be reading the book it was in, especially since he had that experience with both the Nematon and the Nogitsune. It was a mistake that it ended up in his pile of books to read (a mistake that’s still happening), but now…

~IiI~

Boyd followed Derek and no one is really surprised.  Erica’s death caused him a lot of pain that he was never going to recover from, especially because her death should have been preventable. If only she hadn’t been affected by the Drain.

He was buried next to Erica (who had been buried near the Hale’s, against her parent’s wishes) and the pack stayed together in death.

Isaac seemed to have given up with the rest of his former pack mates dead. Scott had been trying to keep him present, but it was a full time job and there are still a few supernatural creatures living in Beacon Hills (Stiles questioned their sanity, but then, he was still here).

At one of the few times he was left to his own devices while not researching (read: he was making coffee and had been forbidden from reading while performing the sacred task upon pain of evisceration, blown out ear drums, and nasty curses), Isaac showed up.

“Hey, Isaac.”

Stiles received a nod.

They stood there for a while, just watching each other.

“I don’t think it’s weak,” Stiles finally said.

Isaac let a small amount of tension release from his shoulders.

“I don’t think you should do it, Scott will be devastated and so will Allison, but it’s your life.  I can understand wanting it to end.

“I wouldn’t though.  I’d want to find what ever – _who ever_ – was causing this and rip them apart.  Torture them for months like Derek and Erica were.  Slowly peel the skin from their body and break a bone everyday. Add a small amount of poison or something to every thing they ingested, make them reliant upon it as it made their body deteriorate.

“It wouldn’t make up for what they suffered.  It won’t make them come back, but at least they might have some satisfaction from knowing that person suffered like they did. Maybe it’s just me projecting hopeful feelings on dead people to justify the death of another person. I don’t really care. That person still killed them. I’ll kill that person.

“Are you going to help me?”  Stiles’ voice remain even, barely, despite the rage that thrums though his body and the glee that he can feel from imagining the pain the perpetrator would feel.

Isaac stared at Stiles for a moment before shifting his gaze to the window.

“…I’ll help.”  It was barely audible to Stiles’ human ears, but it was agreement.

Stiles nods.  “Good. You’ll be searching for anything about magic and the ability to absorb or drain energy.  I’m currently going through a book of Polish rituals…”

~IiI~

Isaac lasted another half a year before succumbing.

Scott was tearing himself apart during and after the burial.

“Why couldn’t he stay?  What could I have done?” he sobbed into Allison’s neck while she hugged him with silent tears dripping down her cheeks.  She shook her head in reply and gripped Scott tighter.

Stiles watched and planned.

That night, he began the preparation for the ritual.

~IiI~

Scott only remained for another half a year before he died.

Allison was nearly inconsolable for a month before she stopped showing emotion to anyone besides Stiles, Lydia, and her father.  Still, Stiles found her new lack of personality and emotions to be highly disturbing.  Yet another person broken.

Stiles had coped by preparing and planning.  He had one chance at this ritual given the lack of magical herbs and not much time to complete the necessary steps.

Lydia had begun to notice, but she was fading rapidly. The toll from the magical drain and the realization that she might have been able to prevent the deaths if she had realized who was dying sooner was wearing down her resistance against the Otherside.  She knew that Stiles was up to something, but she trusted him and she was just so _tired_ …

Deaton, too, was just a weary shell of his usual self.  It had stopped him from being cryptic, but Stiles couldn’t relish the victory.

Allison was so removed from the world that nothing would catch her notice, short of the world exploding beneath her feet.

Chris Argent might have some idea of what Stiles will do, but ignored it in favor of keeping the peace and scanning for information.

Stiles planned in earnest.

~IiI~

He bought a house on the edge of the woods (one of the last things his dad would help him with) and set up the proper designs and runes beneath the house. Burned the proper things, planned the times, the places, the methods.

Maybe he’s no better than Mrs. Blake was, he mused one afternoon while painting the floor with the correct runes from the book.  But then he mentally shrugged.  It didn’t matter anymore.  Almost all the people who care were dead or as good as and he hadn’t seen his dad for nearly a year.  Research and mourning and planning (and revenge) took over his life.

That can only help him, now.

~IiI~

The day Lydia died, he killed the first sacrifice.

 

The boy was just another teenager, maybe 15 years old, who he’d noticed had an obsession with the occult.  It was easy enough to lure the child into a back alley with promises of the location of a specific store.  The dagger, covered in ruins and a few selective mixtures, slid into the boy’s heart easily and with minimal damage.  He didn’t even have time to cry out.

Stiles left the dagger, sparking slightly with death magic, in the body and gently carried the corpse to his Jeep.

No one noticed.  That particular alley existed between two shops that had been abandoned at the beginning of the disaster.

The body went into his Jeep; limp but laid across the backseat, as if asleep in some macabre fairy tale.  Stiles amused himself with the realization that he had repeatedly harassed the werewolves for bleeding in his baby and had just placed a dead body in her without a care as to what it would do to the car.  Priorities change a lot, he thought, especially when death is on the line (but he’d already proved that over and over and over again).

Reaching the dirt road that would lead him to his current home (or, really, base of operations since he usually spent more time at the Argents and returned to the house once a week to do laundry and grab new clothes), Stiles smiled. He was finally doing something, acting and not just researching, no matter how much he loved to learn and discover. He began to realize that things might just work out.

~IiI~

Well, he might have been optimistic.  Deaton was very close to dying himself by the time all the preparations were complete and it wasn’t like Stiles was doing all that much better (but sometimes having a seemingly endless supply of energy was a good thing, even if it was just a mask.  It wasn’t like Allison or Chris had really bothered to notice, after all).

~IiI~

Twenty-six bodies later, he laid their corpses in the correct positions on the earth, having torn up the floorboards earlier in the week to allow for the proper specifications of the ritual.

Twenty-six, three cubed.  Boys, teens like he had been once before the supernatural world decided to make his life shit (and ok, he might be a little to blame in some areas, but for the most part it wasn’t his fault), with summer jobs and a love for their cars like he loved his jeep. Boys, all decaying slightly, despite the various items and herbs and spells to preserve them (without tampering with the actual final ritual) laid out before him.  They were naked, the only marks on their body runes and the single stab wound made by the knife Stiles had in front of him. Softly, he walked around and kissed them all on the lips, a final thank you to the boys who would never know what their deaths meant.

Settling into the ritual, Stiles painted more runes in white and red on his naked body and dimed the lights.  With one deep breath to center himself, Stiles called on the last embers of his spark to ignite and activate the ritual to rewrite history while he chanted in Norse to the best of his ability.

His body glowed before it combusted (no one ever told him that being a Spark was quite this literal, but then, none of the people he had met were Sparks so he supposed he could forgive them).  The fire engulfed the bodies, the Preserve, the town, the state…the world and that future.

Stiles did not acknowledge any of the destruction his ritual caused. Instead, he was racing through the time stream to find a day he could never forget, the earlier the better.

~IiI~

On November 9, 2005, Stiles Stilinski entered the mind of his younger self as he thrashed in a nurse’s arms while listening to the drawn out beep of his mother’s heart monitor in the Beacon Hills Hospital.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I totally did not realize that today is November 9th until I posted this.
> 
> Fair warning, it's un-beta'ed and likely a little rougher than the last chapter because I pretty much just banged this out. Feel free to let me know of any mistakes that I've made so I can fix them!
> 
> Also, I am not a medical professional. The most time I've spent in a hospital was when I was volunteering on the orthopedic ward. Any misrepresentation is not intentional and arises from ignorance more than anything else. I've never lost anyone in my immediate family, so take my characterization with a chunk of salt and again, let me know if I could fix something to make it better.
> 
> Because I forgot in the previous chapter: I don't own Teen Wolf, I make no profit off this, I'm just messing in someone else's sandbox.
> 
> That said, enjoy the chapter.

* * *

 

**Chapter 2**

Stiles didn’t fully acknowledge his temporal shift – he was exhausted and up recognizing that he had arrived at the correct time and place, he slipped into an exhausted sleep.

~IiI~

Around him, nurses rushed about, trying to resuscitate his mother while the doctors gave commands and convened at her bedside.  The men and women whispered harshly at the others, trying to determine what could be done for the poor woman.  The nurses weren’t nearly as concerned with possibilities – they were more interested in practically applying their training to the problem at hand and hoping to keep the woman alive long enough for her husband to say goodbye.

 

John Stilinski, who had only left to buy some food from the cafeteria, had apparently sensed something amiss and charged down the long tiled hallways to his wife’s room.  Despite his best efforts in hastily reaching the room, the voices of the nurses and an obnoxious steady beep alerted him to the fact that he had missed saying a final goodbye to his wife while she was still alive.

 

“…she’s still flatline…”

“—ready … pads again!”

“CLEAR!”

“…”

“…ok, that’s enough…”

“…someone…kid… husband…know….”

“—go.”

 

Melissa McCall’s face entered John’s vision from where he was standing numbly n the general direction of his wife’s room.

 

The nurse walked up to him.  She took in his slackened, disbelieving face, the defeated curve of his shoulders, slumped posture, and lost air.  Her eyes softened and she said, gently, “Come on, John.  Let’s get you and Stiles home.  Come on.”

 

She lightly grabbed his arm and tugged slightly on his shirt to prompt him to move. Like a marionette, he moved and followed her away from the room that had held his wife. 

 

Melissa led him along the hallways that seemed too long and too short, past a chair where his child sat, gently dragging the child with her.  They passed through the entrance of the hospital, among the cars in the parking lot, outside where the sun was shining and wasn’t that unfair? His wonderful wife was gone and it was _sunny_?  Was he not allowed to grieve?  Is that what the world was telling him?  But he remembered that his wife had loved being out in the sun… Perhaps, then, it was a fine day for her…  for her…

 

He was in the car, hands gripping the steering wheel, Claudia’s and his child in the backseat, oddly subdued, but what did it matter? Maybe he had finally realized the severity of the situation?  Well, that was unfair to his son…  But how could a child comprehend what had occurred?  What could he do when the only one who understood the child was gone? What could the child understand?   Understand that the other half of his father had just disappeared without a farewell because of something as simple as a hunger?  If he had just waited another few minutes…

 

They’re in the driveway, he hears Stiles unbuckle the seatbelt and clamber out of the car and he has to close his eyes for a moment.  He can do this.  He can do this. Just a few hours of pretend.

 

John Stilinski follows his son up to the porch and unlocks the door. He pushes the door in, letting his son and Melissa, who must have followed him home from the hospital, before closing and locking the door.

 

They go through their normal routines, Stiles and he, while Melissa clatters about in the kitchen making pasta, based on the amount of water she needs. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine that it’s not Melissa, but Claudia…until the lack of humming and the awkward banging disrupt the image.

 

Stiles, who must have noticed the time, is washing up before banging his way down the stairs to join the adults in the kitchen.

 

The meal is simple, just pasta and sauce like John had thought. He’s not sure what, exactly, Stiles and Melissa talk about, if anything at all.  It’s a bit foggy in his brain.  Maybe it will clear by morning…

 

Melissa leaves at about seven, going back to her house to deal with her son and leaving John and Stiles on their own.

 

It’s not the first time in the past few months that something like this has happened and it’s hard to fight the memories and the echo of hope that had sustained him through those times.  In its place a small, painful hole seems to have taken up a place in his chest.

 

The sky darkened, throwing the living room, where Stiles and he are sitting, into shadows that fight with the lights from the TV.  Eventually, it registers that it is far past Stiles’ bedtime and he prods his son awake from his stupor and herds him up the stairs.

 

Stiles takes a shower, brushes his teeth, climbs into bed and John wonders where all the time went…when he and Claudia had to do all of those things for their child…

 

His child looks up at him with Claudia’s eyes, full of emotions that John can’t – _won’t_ – place.

 

“Hey, Dad…?”

 

“Yeah, Stiles?”

 

“…We’re gonna be ok, right?”

 

“…Yeah,” he hugs Claudia’s and his son, “yeah, we’ll be ok…someday….”

 

“…Ok…G’night, Dad.”

 

“’Night, Stiles.”

 

It doesn’t register with John at that moment, or any moment in the near future, that Stiles saw his mother die that day, heard the heart monitor begin to slow into one continuous beep that will haunt his nightmares for years. It doesn’t register that Stiles might need someone that night or tomorrow to replace the person who understood him so well – better than Scott and who could help him with life because she was an adult.  It doesn’t really register that Stiles lost a person who was almost more important than the one John lost.

 

Instead, John goes down the stairs to the kitchen and stares at all the pots and pans and pieces of the life Claudia and he had.  He stares for half an hour before slowly making his way to the liquor cabinet and tries to fill the hole and sterilize the hole in his heart with alcohol.

~IiI~

The night is quiet, nature’s sounds are muffled by the walls of the house and the humans are not out and about anyways, tethered to their jobs or content with staying indoors. The supernatural creatures, too, are quiet this night.  It is not a full moon, it is not an eclipse of any kind, it is not the new moon, or the Harvest moon. It is, for all intents and purposes, a quiet, regular night.

 

In the Stilinski house, in the child’s room, a slight glow seems to engulf the small figure on the bed.  It starts out as white, before shifting to pink, to scarlet, to crimson, to a deep ruby that slowly fades to a near black.  The child is not still during this time, he begins to twist and turn, face scrunched in a frown, as if trying to escape the warm confines of his blanket cocoon.

 

As the glow darkens, the boy’s movements became more frenzied. By the time the aura becomes a dark ruby color, the boy is thrashing.  Yet no noise disturbs the night, the aura becoming a cocoon itself and stifles all the noises the boys could possibly be making.

 

Time ticks on, until the now black glow begins to dissipate into the shadows from which it was barely distinguishable at the end of the Witching Hour.

 

The magic is settled.

~IiI~

Neither Stilinski male moves further than the kitchen the next day.

 

John is still trying to come to terms with his wife’s death and Stiles is exhausted, not waking until passed three in the afternoon due to the ritual. Fortunately (or unfortunately), his father does not come to wake him up.

 

Amber eyes slowly peek from behind dark eyelashes and heavy eyelids. It takes more than a few tries for the lids to part completely and allow Stiles to observe a room that he hadn’t seen in…damn he can’t even remember how long…he just sort of moved out and on into his research and from there to that last house that was never a home.

 

He spends nearly an hour coming to terms with what happened.

 

It wasn’t everyday someone goes back in time to rewrite history and, well, he never figured that it would work like this – him back in a younger body and with all his memories intact.  The ritual hadn’t actually stated what would happen once it was completed beyond the whole “you can rewrite history” bit.

 

So where to go from here?

 

…

 

Well, an official date might be nice.

 

Stiles slowly, slowly begins to move, knowing from experience that his body is going to hurt like hell after a ritual that power intensive when he was already almost drained.

 

It still doesn’t prepare him for the feeling that every nerve was taken, scrubbed raw, had salt poured on it with lime juice, and then burned.  He, just barely, manages not to start screaming. As it is, he grunts heavily, the noise coming out much higher than he’d heard in a long time, enforcing his slightly odd predicament.  Ok, very odd. …Ok, very, very odd and he was stupid for not having actually read more about that ritual or others like it.

 

Mentally shaking his head, Stiles retries his attempt to leave the bed, one inch at a time. If anyone sees him now, he’s going to die of embarrassment because he’s seriously _doing the worm_ to leave his bed…or that’s what it looks like.

 

During the hour and a half it takes him to actually make it near his desk and thus able to see his computer (and calendar) to figure out the specific date, Stiles comes to the conclusion that he isn’t freaking out enough about the ritual actually working.

 

Of course, he wants to jump up and down and start hollering.  Of course, he’d be in seriously intense pain and therefore just start moaning, grunting, or screaming.

 

And then there’s the point when he realizes what day it is, November 9th, and he really doesn’t feel like doing anything except crawling back to bed and staying there forever and ever.

 

Because his mom just died, yesterday.

 

And he had done a ritual requiring sacrifices that had a lot of magical output.

 

And he might have accidently just killed his mom and ohmyGod this is so much worse than the first time because he could eventually kinda accept that it wasn’t his fault at all and it just happened but no, not this time.  No.  He came back on the wrong day and now there isn’t anything left to do but live with it (because he needed a day that he knew insideout and backwardssideways and it was this day and he knew it would happen but the consequences were just registering and he _could not afford to have a panic attack_ ) and – _God_ – he wanted a drink. Or to freak out.

 

He settles himself on the floor, where he had kinda folded when everything came crashing down on him.

 

Stiles sits there and breathes, trying to regulate it and stave off the even before it happens.  He focuses on the small things, the details in his room and cataloguing the things that had changed since he’d been here last.

 

More time passes, but this time he doesn’t bother trying to guess how long has passed, just lays there as a pile of skin and flesh and bone and humanity…

 

And that makes him want to rush out and cuddle all of his Pack in his closet (never mind that they won’t fit, Isaac would kill him, Peter would kill him very dead, and Derek would just growl and totally actually rip out his throat while Lydia ponders what to write as his obituary to make it as humiliating as possible…and that’s not even touching on what the rest of them would do).

 

He wants to laugh now, so he does, muffling the chuckles in the bit of blanket he manages to grab before he gets too loud.  It hides the edge of hysteria in his laughter…or so he tries to convince himself.

 

Eventually the laughter subsides and he forces himself to actually think about what he should do.  He’s got another chance…how can he change it all?

 

And plans start to sketch themselves across his vision, different scenarios flickering as images through his mind, some more drastic than the others. The gamut is run, between killing Kate Argent the minute she gets into town (and he would do that with the amount of remorse he spares killing a zombie in one of his games…but, like, a million times the glee).  On the other hand, he could go and talk to Deaton…get in contact with Derek’s mom and see where that got him…

 

He’s got time he knows that.  It’s not forever, but a little bit of time.

 

And he’s going to save everyone.

 

Lydia’s voice scoffs at him, saying “you can’t save _everyone_.”

 

And he responds, “I can save everyone who matters.”  As if she didn’t know that.

 

And there’s his resolve and there’s his goal.

 

Stupidly simple to say.  He’s just not sure how to start the doing.

~IiI~

So the day passes for the Stilinski men.  They avoid each other, for slightly different reasons, but it definitely there and Stiles kinda resolves himself to the next few months.  Because honestly?  He’s got enough on his plate, trying to save the people he actually cares about and, yeah, he cares for his dad, but…but…it’s not the same.  It probably never will be, their relationship. The whole, “yes, werewolves are real, no I am not one, but pretty much all my friends are and the crazy murders have been because of various supernatural baddies” had gone over…ok, in his time. He’s never going to tell his father that he willingly killed 27 kids and possibly an entire Earth just to save his Pack.

 

He can’t do that to his father.

 

So, he’ll allow them to drift apart.

~IiI~

Stiles wakes up the next day feeling disoriented.  He’s not quite sure when he got home from the hospital or anything like that, but he’s feeling kinda muzzy.  A few little things are out of place, maybe, but he ignores them and goes down to eat breakfast.

 

He can see his dad’s car in the driveway, so he’s careful to be quiet when he makes himself breakfast.  It’s still weird to think about his mom being in a hospital, but enough time has gone by that he’s used to caring for himself, just a bit.  Stiles is convinced that he’s a big boy – he can do it, will do it, because it means less work for his dad and less worry for his mom.

And for some reason, that causes him to turn and look at the calendar. And look, and look, and look.

 

Because, last he check, it wasn’t November 11.


End file.
